Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Kinetics of supercritical fluid extraction of bituminous coal with tert-butanol

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:5298710
This paper presents a simplified kinetics study of supercritical tert-butanol extraction of Illinois No. 6 bituminous coal. Extraction rates were estimated by continuously measuring the spectrophotometric absorbance (at 235 nm) of the effluent from a fixed-bed flow reactor. The experiments were conducted in the temperature range of 553--633 K and at 6.8 MPa constant pressure by programmed-temperature techniques. A model for which the extractable material is represented by two groups of components, undergoing parallel first-order reactions, satisfactorily describes the experimental data. The kinetics data indicate that the first group is extracted by a physical process which occurs below 573 K. The second group is extracted via a thermal decomposition reaction (with an apparent, average activation energy of 54 kJ/gmol) which is dominant above 573 K. Total fractions extracted were low ({le} 8 wt. %) at the temperature and pressure employed. 21 refs., 10 figs., 3 tabs.
Research Organization:
California Univ., Davis, CA (United States). Dept. of Chemical Engineering
Sponsoring Organization:
DOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
FG22-90PC90288
OSTI ID:
5298710
Report Number(s):
DOE/PC/90288-T1; ON: DE91018736
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English